Order of the Black Sun Box Set 10

by Preston William Child

  Jean stepped forward and knocked on the door to the chamber. They could hear movement inside and then Elijah's voice. “One second,” came a tired groan. The door swung open and Elijah was standing before them in a robe, in the middle of putting his glasses on his face. When they were on, his eyes widened at the sight of his visitors.

  He opened his mouth but they couldn't risk him starting to shout for help.

  Jean threw a fist forward and his knuckles smacked against Elijah's face, knocking him onto his back. The right-side lens of his glasses cracked from the blow and his nose had blood running down it. He looked dazed and confused, somewhere in the middle between being knocked out and still trying to wake up from his sleep. He stared up at Jean, Nina, and Charles in confusion, obviously never imagining he would ever see them walk into his private chambers.

  Mostly, the eyes behind his glasses were fixed on Nina. He spoke, and surprisingly kept his voice down. “What ... what do you think you're doing?”

  “I need to get into the vault. The deep vault.”

  Elijah touched two fingers to the blood running down his lips and then looked at it staining his fingertips. He shook his head, took off his glasses, and looked at the damaged lens. He swore to himself but put them back on, probably being blind as a bat without them. Even if they were partially broken, it was better than not being able to see at all.

  “You could have just asked,” Elijah said, slowly pulling himself to his feet. “You didn't need to punch me in the face.”

  “Yes I did,” Jean said. “You and your friends deserve nothing less.”

  “But might I ask, what is it you intend to do in the vault? It's a bit late in the evening for us to get back to work, wouldn't you say?”

  “I'm not going to be here in the morning,” Nina said. “I'm done being a prisoner and I'm done helping you dust off the things you stole from Purdue.”

  Elijah raised his hands innocently. “I didn't steal anything.”

  Charles balked beside Nina. “The people you work for did and you were happy enough to put those things away for them.”

  “That's my job. All hard working people have one, no?” Elijah was trying to be logical like always. He was a pragmatic, sensible individual, but his habit of turning a blind eye to the rest of the group he was with frustrated Nina so much. “So this is your decision then, Dr. Gould? You're going to try your hand at pulling off a prison break? It's ... ill-advised.”

  Jean raised a fist again. “Why? You going to try and stop us?”

  “Not at all, no,” Elijah said with an amused smile. “It's not part of my job description that I have to play guard. But, that being said, if I decide that I'm not going to let you into the vault, then there goes your plan. You could knock me out and try and use me to get in, I suppose, but you'll hit a bit of a wall once you reach the third level of security.”

  Nina remembered that well. Even if they dragged his unconscious body around and used his eyes for the retina scan and his hands for the finger prints, there was still a long personalized code that needed to be punched into the pad for that enormous vault door to open. Elijah would need to be willing to enter his code for them to ever have a chance of getting in there.

  “So I ask again ... what do you want with the vault? You say your plan is to escape, but that's a bit of detour from the exit, don't you think? Do you plan on taking back all of David Purdue's things? Seems like it'll be tough to drag all of those crates during your big break out. Besides, that would really make our time storing those items such a waste.”

  “I'm not taking back any of those. I just want one thing from the deep vault.” Elijah straightened his glasses as best he could and listened intently. Nina finally told him what he wanted to know. “We are leaving, but we're taking the Spear of Destiny with us.”

  “Which one?” Elijah said with a little chuckle. He had a point. There were multiple weapons called that, but he knew full well which one Nina meant. He tapped his finger against his head like he just had a revelation. “Oh! Of course. That one. The one that brought Julian back to life.”

  “And me,” Charles said under his breath.

  “We did deposit that into the deep vault, didn't we? Hmm. Then I suppose it is possible for us to retrieve it. What do you want with it exactly? From my understanding, Julian has a lot of plans for that item. You've seen how he's been testing its power. I can't imagine he would be happy if it were misplaced...” Elijah, looking aggravated with the state of his vision, tried to wipe off some of the cracks with his robe to no avail. “But, as I said, I have a specific job within this order and recapturing stray prisoners isn't a part of that.”

  Nina was shocked, but it wasn't the first time Elijah had gone against her expectations. He was a prisoner of the Black Sun himself once. Maybe he felt a little sympathy with their situation. “You ... you'll help us then?”

  “I'll open the door, sure,” Elijah said. “I have every reason to do that. I could just be going to check on some of the items during a restless night. Once that door is open, though, I'm not responsible for anything that happens next. I'm not responsible for stopping you and I'm not responsible if this blows up in your face—which it probably will by the way.”

  The three escaped prisoners stared in bewilderment. Jean had his fists clenched throughout the whole conversation, and only now did the tension in his hands relax a little. Elijah had given far less resistance than expected. Honestly, Nina thought that they would be stopped right here and now. But instead, Elijah was completely cooperating.

  “Okay then,” Nina said, still a little uncertain about everything. “Let's go then. Quietly. Quickly.”

  “Very well,” Elijah said.

  They walked through the hallways of the innards of the Black Sun base. Nina was glad that there didn't seem to be any other guards patrolling the facility. They probably only expected to need one to keep any eye on the prisoners. The rest of the place was just filled with loyal fellow members, so there was no real reason to have to bolster security outside of the dungeons.

  Luckily, Nina knew the way to the vault so knew that Elijah wasn't leading them astray.

  Jean looked at Elijah threateningly. “If you shout, scream for help, give any sign of alarm to all of your sleeping friends, I won't hesitate to break your arm. I'm through with all of you.”

  “Break my arm, huh?” Elijah asked casually as he walked beside him. “That's a great plan. I certainly wouldn't start screaming then. Causing me intense pain is a sure-fire way to keep me quiet.” Elijah turned to Nina. “Why the Spear of Destiny?”

  “That's none of your business,” Nina said.

  “I suppose not.” Elijah fell silent and was looking down at his feet in thought. “But it is curious, isn't it? You had all of that time with me in the vault to plan some sort of theft. You could have taken that spear plenty of times. Only now, after Julian's little display earlier, have you decided try your best at absconding with it ... very interesting. So you saw something that interested you, after all? Was it when they brought this old timer back to life after he got shot?”

  Charles coughed uncomfortably.

  “Lower your voice,” Jean said, shoving Elijah forward a few steps. “You're being too loud.”

  “My apologies,” Elijah said at a low whisper. “Curiosity has always made me a little careless. I think I've figured out the answer to my own question.” He turned back to Nina, peering at her through his cracked lens. “Your dead friend? The one who’s given this order all kinds of trouble, is it? David Purdue.”

  “Shut up,” Nina muttered. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Fair enough,” Elijah said. “But do you really plan on sticking the spear into a pile of ash and hoping he pops out like a phoenix? Seems a bit unlikely, if you ask me.”

  “No one’s asking you,” Nina said.

  They came to the thick, metal door that towered over them. If they could just get through that door, then a large part of her plan wil
l have worked. They could figure out the rest after, once they got over this next obstacle.

  Elijah took off his glasses and put his face in front of the scanner. He put his palm on the screen next. It prompted him to enter his clearance code. He stopped as his fingers hovered in front of the keys, pausing for a beat, and then glanced back at Nina. She really hoped he wasn't changing his mind. They need his code or the door wasn't going to open even an inch.

  Elijah sighed. “This is your last chance to go back to your rooms.” He was using the word rooms very loosely. The places they were sleeping in were undeniably prison cells and couldn't really be called anything else. “If you turn back now, we can all pretend that this night never happened. If I open this door for you, I'm not responsible for anything that happens next.”

  “That would be nice, wouldn't it?” Nina said with fake enthusiasm. “We all just go trotting back peacefully to our holding cells. You get to go tuck yourself back into bed and act like there's nothing going wrong. We're all friends in the morning!”

  Elijah nodded along, obviously not hearing her sarcasm. He didn't seem quite capable of fully understanding the intricacies of human beings. He was in his own world, where only logical things made any sense and the only people he cared about had been dead for centuries.

  Nina changed her tone to what she was actually feeling. “We are done being prisoners, Elijah. We're taking the Spear of Destiny and we're getting the hell out of here. Now open the door.”

  Elijah rubbed his temples in frustration, still lingering in front of the door's control panel. “This is practically suicide. You understand that? You want to leave so badly but you don't even know where you are. You don't have a clue what the outside of this facility even looks like—”

  “Open the door,” Nina repeated.

  Elijah ignored her commands and kept trying to make his point. “For all you know, we're in the middle of a desert. You go outside in a place like that, you will die.”

  “Open the door,” she said again with more force.

  “Or ... or we are tucked in an ice burg in the arctic. How do you plan on escaping then?”

  “Open the door. Now.” Nina made sure that he heard just how serious she was.

  Elijah's expression tightened, his cheekbones looked like they were strangling the rest of his face. His lips were bound so tightly that he was barely able to even open them to speak. “You are making a terrible mistake.”

  “Then it's our mistake to make.” Nina pointed at the control panel. “Now get this door open.”

  Elijah let out a long exhale. He looked at her hard from behind the cracked glass on his face, like he was trying to fathom why she would ever take these actions. “I really thought you were smarter than this, Dr. Gould. How disappointing.”

  Elijah gave up his protests and started punching in some keys on the control panel. He didn't look happy at all about it and part of Nina worried that he was actually typing in some security alert that would set off alarms in the whole hideout. He punched in the last key and she waited with baited breath to see what happened next.

  Any second, the alarms might start blaring.

  Instead, the colossal metal door slowly pulled itself open and Nina breathed a little easier. Jean and Charles looked just as relieved that their plan was working so far. Elijah, on the other hand, just stared at the floor and shook his head like he'd just sentenced them all to death.

  “Come on,” Nina said and nudged Jean and Charles to follow her into the gigantic vault chamber. They kept close behind her as they hurried inside. Nina glanced back and saw that Elijah was slowly following inside but was in much less of a hurry than they were. He seemed to be contemplating each step, like he was determining every single possible scenario this could lead to. Nina called back to him. “Keep up, will you?!”

  Elijah picked up the pace—but only barely.

  Nina couldn't risk Elijah leaving the vault. He was the only one who could open the door from the inside. If he got out of the room and let the door close, all they would have accomplished would be getting trapped yet again. They would have just traded one prison cell for another. At least it was a little more spacious, but she really didn't want to even give Elijah the chance to try that. But it didn't seem like he would. He really didn't look like he was conspiring to do anything like that. Of all the members of the Order of the Black Sun who Nina had dealt with, Elijah was the most reasonable. It probably was thanks to him not being a field operative or that he could sympathize with the order's captives, since he'd been one himself.

  Nina got to the computer and managed to get the deep vault in the floor to open up, revealing the pit of stored artifacts. Elijah hover over her shoulder. “Perhaps you were a quicker learner than I gave you credit for.”

  Jean and Charles craned their necks to see down into the deep vault. They both looked dumb-founded by it just like Nina had been at first. It was far from a conventional place to store valuable things.

  Nina started operating the crane hanging above the deep vault. All she needed was to look up the Spear of Destiny's filing number. She scanned the master list for it but Elijah beat her to the punch, proving to be something of a living, breathing index for the Black Sun's collection.

  “J-twenty-one,” he said based on his memory alone. When Nina glanced at him in surprise, Elijah shrugged. “Of course I remember that one. Julian has been accessing it every other day, for the most part.” She was sure that was just an excuse. Elijah could probably name the placement of each and every item that was stored in that pit.

  Nina typed in J-21 and the craned sprang to life, lowering its large claw down into the big hole in the floor. When it reeled itself back up, it was lugging a long container and placed it on the floor in front of them all. Nina unlocked the container and propped it open. Sure enough, there was the long, slender spear she had once skewered Julian Corvus with. The same one that brought him back from death and the same one he used on Charles in his resurrection experiment. The same spear Nina had searched for with Purdue and Sam. That expedition wasn't very long ago but it felt like decades. It was a better time when she wasn't a hostage and David Purdue was still breathing.

  The Spear of Destiny could be the only way to get him back. It sounded ludicrous, she knew that, and maybe it was, but she had to at least try. She owed Purdue that much and her life had been pretty horrible since he'd been gone.

  She picked up the Spear of Destiny and immediately felt a strange feeling surge through her bones. She was being filled with whatever otherworldly power existed in the blade. It really felt like she had life itself coursing through her, ready to share it with the dead. Maybe she really could bring Purdue back.

  There was a loud and familiar slam as the locks within the vault door shifted and the door itself started to open. Julian entered with a whole squad of armed guards at his back. His gray eyes scanned the room and he smiled. He slowly started clapping, like Nina and the others had just pulled off some great feat.

  “What a surprise to be woken up to,” Julian said smugly. “Far better than even the best dreams I was having. I can say that for certain.”

  Nina turned to Elijah, feeling betrayal welling inside of her. She should have known that he was making it too easy for them. She should never have believed a word he said or lowered her guard around him ... but she had.

  “You alerted them.”

  “I didn't, no,” Elijah said calmly. “I did exactly as I said I would. I opened the door. I just left out the fact that the vault door is on a timer. If it opens when it shouldn't—like for instance, in the dead of night—a silent alarm goes off to Julian.”

  “And you didn't say a thing about that,” Jean growled. “Innocent, my ass.”

  “I was under no obligation to talk about it. I gave you all a chance to turn back before the door was opened. You didn't take it. As I said before, I'm not responsible for anything that happened because of your poor choices. I went along with your master plan. Your master
plan just wasn't very effective.”

  Elijah spoke in that same logical way that he always did. He could so easily detach himself from any guilt or responsibility. Whether it was directly or indirectly, he stabbed them in the back by not warning them about the alarm system. He'd played them for fools.

  “Don't look so hurt,” Julian said with visible sadistic glee. “Elijah isn't a prisoner anymore. He hasn't been for quite some time. He's not like the rest of you. He was never part of this little chain gang you have going. Pathetic really, but some people learn and some people don't. You happen to fall into the latter.”

  Julian came closer but Nina held the spear of Destiny defensively between them. It was an all-too familiar position they were in. She'd run him through before with it but that had only made things worse. If she did it again, would he just come back with more power than ever?

  Suddenly, Elijah grabbed hold of the spear's shaft and yanked the weapon from her grip before she even had a chance to defend herself from Julian. By taking the spear from her, Elijah had stopped history from repeating itself, for better or worse.

  “It's over,” Elijah said bluntly. “You'll only make it much worse if you fight.”

  “Besides...” Julian laughed as he came even closer. “What were you even going to do with it? That spear doesn't have the best track record when it comes to killing. It's pretty terrible at it, actually. Can't keep anyone down.”

  Elijah handed the Spear of Destiny to Julian like a good little minion and Nina wanted to push the curator into the deep vault hole. She couldn't believe she was stupid enough to think he may have been different from the rest. He wasn't. Not really. He was just quieter about it.

  “You could have had your pick of anything in the deep vault,” Julian said, practically in her face now. “Some of the things in there could have gotten you out of here without a problem. Some of them could have even killed us all where we stand. Instead, you took the one thing you knew I was currently interested in and studying. That just seems like malice to me. Letting vengeance fry your brain, is that it? You should try forgiveness sometime. As I forgave you.”